AWS on Gen AI at Sustainability LIVE London Global Summit

December 03, 2024

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Rahul Sareen, GM for Sustainability Solutions at AWS, highlights how generative AI is solving challenges and driving innovation in sustainability

During his keynote presentation at Sustainability LIVE London Global Summit 2024, Rahul Sareen, GM for Sustainability Solutions at AWS, provided a comprehensive look at integrating generative AI (Gen AI) into sustainability practices and detailed a roadmap for organisations who wish to harness Gen AI.

He opens by emphasising its transformative potential: “I firmly believe that AI can transform every aspect of the business and we are seeing more and more adoption in the sustainability space.”

Rahul outlines practical applications of Gen AI, sharing examples such as Climate Tech Start-Ups leveraging the technology for ESG reporting and customer engagement.

He highlights how “now they are looking at how they can provide more chatbot experience to their customers to improve the overall customer experience and also help customers answer some of the questions.”

These capabilities extend beyond efficiency, offering insights and solutions previously unattainable without AI.

For example, Nasdaq is using Gen AI to process large datasets, uncover actionable insights and enhance decision-making speed - “they are using Gen AI to make more actionable insights [...] that they can use internally, but also it can offer to their customers.”

He also highlights the widespread applicability of Gen AI, noting its use across industries such as finance, supply chain management and product lifecycle optimisation.

Rahul Sareen, GM for Sustainability Solutions at AWS

Overcoming challenges with robust data strategies

A critical takeaway from Rahul’s talk was the importance of a solid data foundation.

“Some (data foundation models) are paid, some are free and every organisation has access to it.

"But what we have seen is organisations that become successful in building these Gen AI applications are the ones that leverage the base foundation models and then apply their data to it and then make more business context.”

He stresses the necessity of managing structured, unstructured and streaming data effectively, calling for secure and integrated platforms to eliminate data silos.

Security and governance also emerge as key priorities.

Rahul Sareen at Sustainability LIVE London 2024

Best practices for leveraging generative AI

For businesses aiming to implement Gen AI effectively, Rahul offers actionable insights.

He encourages organisations to prioritise high-impact use cases aligned with both sustainability and business goals to justify investment and experimentation.

To ensure successful deployment, he recommends adopting a flexible toolkit capable of accommodating various foundation models.

Investing in team education emerges as a recurring theme.

Rahul emphasises the need for cross-functional collaboration, stating, “They (people) go and understand what the capabilities are and what tool sets are available because they are the ones who have to make a business decision or a domain decision so they need to work closely with the tech team. [...]

"Make sure that you have the right tools and the right resources available and you can provide that to your business leaders so that they understand.”

Rahul Sareen explores how GenAI can be integrated into sustainability agendas